How to communicate with the elderly about sustainability?
As an industrial designer and representative of Generation Z, I often have to explain to my parents what sustainability is or what its principles are.
But they often say that they've experienced it before, that the world is no longer evolving, and that we are going back in time.
This intrigued me and I decided to go a little through their old world and see why they would interpret sustainability differently.
The world of the 60s to the 90s behind the Iron Curtain:
After the Second World War, the eastern part of Europe begins to rebuild itself, this time having some new values. Socialism promotes the idea of equality and solidarity and eliminates the idea of private property. Most of the products and resources being controlled by the state.
From the short introduction, I can already identify a problem. Private property.
Many products and companies in our world, the modern world, are making the transition to services, thus promising a much more sustainable or even circular business. Partially or totally eliminating the model in which the beneficiary owns the product.
However, it is difficult for me to talk to my parents about the benefits of the system when they, their family, or their friends, fought more than 30 years ago for freedom. Many risked their lives or even perished to live like in the free world. A world where people controlled their own destiny and way of consumption.
Another aspect of life before the fall of communism in the early 1990s was the scarcity of products.
Nothing was available. Without queuing, waiting lists, or knowing someone higher up, you couldn't get to even the most common products.
The fear that stock might run out at any moment and the risk that you might return home without the goods you wanted, pushed people to be more creative and find substitutes.
This created the concept of creativity to survive. But those who were less creative or resourceful were forced to consume less and do without the desired goods.
Creativity might do the job
This brings me back to the modern reality, where people are even being encouraged to stop buying products, and going without some products is actually the most sustainable measure we can take.
We are also often reminded that many natural resources are running out and that we need to recycle, reuse or be creative and repurpose the products we already have.
“You can’t get it even if you need it” vs “Please don’t buy if you don’t need it”
The parallel between the two periods is clear, but we want a circular economy and my parents lived in a shortage economy. The differences between the two for many are not clear and words like " it's not enough", "consume more moderately" or "repair and reuse" bring up unpleasant memories in many people's minds.
Back then repairing wasn't fun, it was a necessity
For about 45 years, Eastern Europe has lived under dictatorship and also has developed a mechanism to expose and fight against propaganda, but this also comes with a serious dose of paranoia.
And many changes in society are seen by the older people as manipulations.
We have the example of the pandemic where in the countries of the Eastern bloc the world was more reluctant and reticent about vaccination.
Sustainability can face the same reluctance without adequate information and specially designed campaigns. In my experience contextualization, practical examples, and highlighting the differences help a lot.
The latter is of major importance, I for example start from similar points in the past and present precisely to highlight the differences. No one wants to steal their freedom again.
We are moving forward, towards the future, and I think we can focus on the positive things the future has in store for us after certain changes, rather than the reasons why we are making these changes.
images gathered from the following sources: Activenews, Tsminteractive, charter97, fackeoff, back-in-ussr, don-ald
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